subjecting the elector to bear his part in the payment of wages to the representative, the above conjecture will be equally applicable, by changing the words right and claim into liability.[70] It was according to the natural course of things, that the mayors or bailiffs, as returning officers, with some of the principal burgesses (especially where incorporating charters had given them a pre-eminence), would take to themselves the advantage of serving a courtier or neighbouring gentleman, by returning him to parliament, and virtually exclude the general class of electors, indifferent to public matters, and without a suspicion that their individual suffrages could ever be worth purchase. It is certain that a seat in the Commons was an object of ambition in the time of Edward IV., and I have little doubt that it was so in many instances much sooner. But there existed not the means of that splendid corruption which has emulated the Crassi and Luculli of Rome. Even so late as 1571, Thomas Long, a member for Westbury, confessed that he had given four pounds to the mayor and another person for his return. The elections were thus generally managed, not often perhaps by absolute bribery, but through the influence of the government and of the neighbouring aristocracy; and while the freemen of the corporation, or resident householders, were frequently permitted, for the sake of form, to concur in the election, there were many places where the smaller part of the municipal body, by whatever names distinguished, acquired a sort of prescriptive right through an usage, of which it was too late to show the commencement.[71]